It was a brutal Main Event Day 2 with only 24 players surviving the madness that went down at the felt. By the end of the scheduled 8 rounds, Malaysia’s Michael Soyza and Chinese Taipei’s Jack En-Ching Wu owned the largest stacks with only 1K difference between them. The larger of the two was Michael Soyza with 355,000 in chips making him the day’s chip leader.

Main Event Day 3 Chip Leader, Christopher Soyza

The APT Finale Macau Championships 2017 got underway with 88 players back at Macau Billionaire Poker in Babylon Casino. Making headlines the past two days were Day 1A chip leader Wei Guoliang and Day 1B chip leader Kalyan Chakravarathy, however today, these two players in particular would find themselves in the news for other reasons. Soyza.

On the third hour of play, Soyza stormed into the chip leader’s seat after winning a big pot against Andrew An. It began with a preflop war that ended with Soyza calling An’s four-bet. When the board finally completed J♦7♠6♠4d} 4♣, with more chips dumped in on the turn and river, Soyza won with J♠9♠ over An’s A♦K♠.

With his big stack, Soyza exerted dominance over the two starting day chip leaders with Wei as his first customer. Soyza won two consecutive pots against Wei; he shoved on a 3♣4♦2♦7♦K♦ board that wasn’t called, then followed it up with a winning 10-9 on a board of 7-10-5-2-Q.

An hour later, Soyza shipped in all of Chakravarathy’s chips in one doozy of a hand. Setting the pace was Soyza with a three-bet preflop that Chakravarathy called. On a K-Q-5 flop Soyza bet and was called. On the 7 turn, Soyza shoved and Chakravarathy took the risk despite having quite a healthy stack. When the hands were revealed, everyone at the table was stunned with Soyza showing his J-10 draw and Chakravarathy with Q-6 pair. Chakravarathy’s hole cards were also offsuit which made it that more of a shocker. The 9 came on the river and Chakravarathy was straightened out.

Second in chips heading into Day 3, En-Ching Wu

For Jack En-Ching Wu, he delivered a very painful bust out to Zhang Jian to drive his stack to where it ended the day. Jian three-bet all in with his 100k stack and Wu called. Jian held A♥Q♦ and Wu with J♥J♦ The flop came down 3♥Q♠7♥ improving Jian to a higher pair; with 4♥ on the turn, Jian picked up more outs; but with the river J♠, Wu landed one of the two outs he needed to retake the lead and oust Jian. Wu bagged up 354,000 in chips.

Notable players advancing to Day 3

Another player high up in the rung and easily claiming the third rank was Norway’s Kai Paulsen. Paulsen is definitely one player to watch out for coming Day 3 with his 335,500 stack. Several days ago, he was crowned the APT champion of champions after winning the Game of Champions event.

Joining the top three leaders into Day 3 are well-known pros Kosei Ichinose and Kunal Patni however both will have their work cut out with below average stacks. Also in the roster is the one remaining APT Main Event champion, Andre Moracchini. Moracchini had a rough day at the races with his stack swinging from average to way below. He found renewed life after a quadruple up with his A♠K♠ nut flush. He ended the day with 126,000.

Day 2 fallouts

Among the 64 players that banged the rail today, quite a number of them were highly decorated players from the Asian circuit. One of the first to fall was Sparrow Cheung. As the day progressed, Yuri Ishida, Victor Chong, Soo Jo Kim, Xixiang Luo, Yohwan Lim, Iori Yogo, Pete Chen, Albert Paik, and Tetsuya Tsuchikawa also fell to the wayside.

The final 24 players will return on Tuesday, December 5 at 1pm for the race to the Final 8. The money will start flowing in Day 3 with 18 places paid starting at HKD 27,900.

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